


a place to rest your weary head

by cursinginenochian



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 11, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Jody Mills, Claire Ships It, Depression, Episode: s11e22 We Happy Few, Hurt Castiel, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Jody Mills, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam is the Voice of Reason, Season/Series 11, Women of Supernatural, hurt everyone actually, i have no morals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:32:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8637109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cursinginenochian/pseuds/cursinginenochian
Summary: "Sheriff Mills has a decision to make. She knows this, knew it since her phone rang a few hours ago, but the dire urgency of the situation truly sets in once the headlights of a classic car illuminate her driveway. She doesn't want to choose between the safety of her girls and that of her boys, but she’s known it's exactly what she’ll have to do."orAfter one last grandstand fight with Lucifer and The Darkness, a certain three hunters need a place to patch up, and what better place is there to go than South Dakota?





	

Jody doesn't know what to do about this. Every maternal instinct she's gained in the last decade conflicts and spars -- she knows better than to ruin the good things she has going.

As much as she'd like to invite her boys in with open arms, part of her knows it'll put her at risk, put her girls at risk too -- the same girls they'd brought to her doorstep, trusted her with. Regardless, Jody has to decide between them before Claire and Alex come downstairs. They're going to ask why she's standing at the front door at three in the morning with a hand gripped tightly around its knob, and she won't know what to say. She doesn't think she can lie to them.

Her daughters, Jody thinks, but who knows if she'll ever be able to call them that without remembering the child she’s already lost.

No matter what comes first, Sheriff Mills has a decision to make. She knows this, has known it since her phone rang a few hours ago. The dire urgency of the situation only truly sets once the headlights of a classic car illuminate her gravel paved driveway.

A dreadful, sinking feeling has been settling in her chest since Sam's voice rattled through her phone's speakers. Jody dropped her phone in an icy puddle a few weeks back, it fell out of her pocket while she was chasing down Claire for what felt like the twentieth time this month.

She's hunting again, and she would’ve been doing well enough to keep Jody from worrying quite as much if Claire had been tracking what she thought she was. What the college student assumed was the ghost of a sleazy old man who died wanted for killing a handful of children thirty some years ago turned out to be just that -- there was just one inconvenience.

Shotgun shells stuffed with salt didn't do much but bring the guy to his knees instead of sending him out in a plume of fractured, unnatural smoke because the man was alive and mortal as ever. (Jailed now, too, with a life sentence under high security at some state institution up north. Not that that’s stopped Jody from keeping Claire under lock and key ever since.)

Jody isn’t sure if it was the water damaged speakers that made Sam sound so weak and empty and tired when he’d called. She hopes that’s the case. Blood rushes through her ears and the thundering of her own heartbeat drowns out the crunch of gravel rolled under the Impala’s wheels for a moment, but once the doors are opened with an ear piercing squeal and Sam is pulling himself out of the driver’s seat, all of her worries are forgotten, at least, for the moment.

  
Right now, as she swings the storm door out of her way and rushes -- still barefoot, she realizes as her feet hit the rough, freezing pavement -- to his side, trying to ignore the way her stomach lurches once she gets close enough to see the damage that whatever Big Bad Apocalyptic Mess they’re dealing with has wrecked havoc on his features. The hair on the left side of his head glistens in the early morning moonlight, matted to his scalp with dark, dirt streaked blood.

“I -- we need help, please,” he’d begged breathlessly through the phone.

Jody still isn’t sure she wants to know what happened that gave such an unrecognizable helplessness to his words. She just wants to keep them alive if she can do that much. “Sam, your head,” she murmurs, reaching towards him with shaking hands as he steadies himself, two hands planted firmly on the car's sleek hood.

He jerks away, eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. “I’m fine,” he gasps. His voice is tight with pain, but still, he blinks away the blood that’s running in his eyes and presses a desperate hand to the Impala’s window. “Dean needs help, please, I-I,” He stops, distraught, before slowly slipping to the ground with a defeated groan. He coughs another word out, but no sooner than the words are slipping from his lips Jody is at his side.

“Sam,” she eases him, tries to look into his eyes and catch his gaze. Wet mud from last night's rainstorm soak through the knees of her pajama pants fabric, but she barely registered the chill that runs up her spine. Frantic hazel eyes flicker back and forth, searching relentlessly for an enemy that was left behind in an abandoned warehouse -- always a fucking warehouse these days -- miles and miles away. It’s a miracle he was able to navigate back to Sioux Falls.

Sam shakes his head, heaving out a breath before speaking again. “He’s more hurt than me, he and Cas --” his words catch in his throat again, and this time he can’t keep his tears back. They run down, clearing pink, blood tinged track marks through his dirty face.

With a small comforting half-hug against his uninjured side that he tries to push away, interrupting her words with quiet pleas, begging her to help his brother, Jody stands up again to peer through the driver side window.

She’s terrified at the scene that greets her. Dean and Cas, bloodied and still, lean against each other in the backseat. She’s too far away to make out their faces. For a split second, she thinks they’re dead in the back of the oldest Winchester’s beloved car and her heart skips a beat. But then, to her relief, Jody catches the steady rise and fall of Dean’s chest.

Before Sam can say another word, she rushes to the back of the car, going to the door opposite to the side Castiel is leaning on, afraid of to take away any support the car might be offering. Without the sun hanging in the sky, it’s still frigid outside and Jody really wishes she could find a way to help Sam in and get to the other two boys at the same time. Cold wind blows into the car’s warm interior once she pries the door open and Sam is still conscious, watching every move she makes with haunting accuracy, so she decides he can probably hang on there for a little while longer. After all, he was the one who drove over here.

“Are they okay?” Sam grates out, and when she doesn’t answer right away, “Jody?”

Cas is awake, wide eyed and staring straight into her soul, as she can tell, and she startles at the intensity of his gaze.

“Yeah,” she breathes, “Cas is awake, Dean’s --” she reaches out to press two fingers to the side of his neck and cringes when her hand comes into contact with warm, sticky blood. A slow, steady pulse thrums under her touch and Castiel blinks at her, his face creased with confusion. “He’s breathing.”

Sam sighs with relief, sagging into the curve of the car door, and closes his eyes.

 

It takes them almost a half an hour to get everyone in the house, even with Claire and Alex’s help.

Jody ends up calling them, using that tinny sounding cell phone she forgot she’d stuck back in her deep flannel pant’s pocket, once she realizes that Castiel is virtually unresponsive. It doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion, once she tries to guide him out of the car it becomes clear that he isn’t present.

He looks through her, only moving every few moments to grab at Dean’s limp hand like he’s reminding himself that the hunter is still next to him.

After ringing Claire -- “Honey, come outside. I need your help, it’s--” she hadn’t known what to say after that, how to explain what she’d woken up to -- she and Alex guide Sam into the house before pointing Sam into the direction of the shower, once they’ve ruled out the risk of any fatal injuries.

The younger man is filthy, bloodied and shaking from shock, so Jody thinks a shower would do him good.

“Sit down if you get dizzy, okay? And don’t turn the water up too hot, I don’t need you falling down and hitting your head any more than you already have tonight,” Jody instructs him, grabbing a towel and old pajama pants so big she has to tie them twice around her waist with drawstring to keep them from falling. “If you need help, anything at all, you call for Alex.” She can barely keep from rolling her eyes when the teen gives her a disbelieving stare. “ What? It’s not like there’s anything you haven’t seen before.”

Alex flushes bright red at the comment but makes sure that Sam leaves the bathroom door unlocked and stays by the hallway in case anything happens.

Outside, Claire tentatively prods at Castiel’s shoulder again. He’s the only one of the three men who isn’t injured, as far as they can tell, but he still sits with his head pressed against Dean’s chest, eyes on everything and nothing. Once Jody is back by her side, she shuffles away from the car, uncomfortable.

“He won’t look at me,” she says, eyes flickering back and forth from Jody to Castiel and back again. “It’s like I’m not even there.” Her voice shakes slightly, fearful and disbelieving, still not completely awake. It’s early, only Wednesday morning, and Jody figures she’s been up most of the night scouring the internet for a case or, if she’s lucky, getting some of her homework finished.

It takes Sam’s help to haul up Dean and keep him steady long enough to get him inside and on the guest bed. Once the eldest brother is out of the car, Castiel jolts away from them all like he’s just woken up, scrabbling and scratching at the door nearest to him.

“Dean,” he gasps, eyes wide and unseeing, only aware enough to reach out and protect the body of a man who’s already halfway up the driveway. He lunges for Jody once she reaches out to help him up, clawing and spitting and cursing at her in languages she’s never heard.

She can barely make out a single word, only harsh sounds born out of raw fear and anger and “Dean, Dean, Dean”.

He pushes and resists in Jody’s hold, but nearly twenty years pursuing law enforcement has been good for something, and it doesn’t take her long to wrestle the weakened man out of the car and get his hands behind his back.

She pushes him down onto his knees, careful not to force him into the car or the pavement it’s parked on too harshly, and tries her best to catch his gaze. “He’s alright, Castiel,” she promises to deaf ears, “he’s right inside, just calm down.”

His gaunt frame shakes in hysteria, eyes begging to be let out -- from her tight hold, Jody guesses, but she wouldn’t know for sure until she could get him to settle. Much to her dismay, her hands are quickly smeared with blood the sluggishly seeps from a wound in his side. The trench coat she’d seen him the first time they’d met is nowhere to be found and an angry red patch blossoms from the white of his button down shirt.

“You can’t, you can’t,” he begs, shivering against her as he fights and fights to get away. He’s still fighting, yanking away from her touch like the contact is burning him up, but he’s injured and fatigued. Sheriff Mills holds him tighter still under the pale moonlight.

She doesn’t know what she’s denying, but she’ll say just about anything to attempt putting him at ease. “I won’t,” she hushes, hugging him as tight as she can stand without aggravating his wounds even more. Slowly but surely, he sinks into her, and to her disbelief, the shoulder of her hoodie wets with an angel’s tears.

“I tried so hard to save them,” he sobs, and Jody doesn’t bother trying to guess what from this time. For now, all she can do is make sure they’re safe after the battle is won.

  


 

 


End file.
